


Until the Opponent is Finished

by florahart



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-consistent death, Friendship, Gen, Johnny Lawrence is not good at feelings, Regret, past trauma and talking about it, reference to a time when Tommy and Bobby were more than friends, set within the bounds of the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:55:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28189578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/florahart/pseuds/florahart
Summary: We don't have a lot of canon regarding these characters besides Johnny, so I gave Tommy and Bobby the potential of a relationship that at least one of them regrets not pursuing.  In the episode this lives in, we maybe see a wedding ring on one of them (and not one on the other), but it's blink-n-missit quick and also  this in no way precludes this past.  Roll with it.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Until the Opponent is Finished

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyricalnights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricalnights/gifts).



The reason Johnny’s list of regrets is so long, of course, is that he hasn’t ever managed to figure out how to see them coming, and listening to him here, now, Tommy’s not sure he ever will. Although it seems like he’s giving it an honest try, and Tommy’s been surprised by things before.

This fucking cancer, for one thing; he likes to think that if he’d known, in 1993, that he was already halfway to the end of the line, well, maybe he’d have manned up and told people who he was. Told Bobby who he was, anyway. He should have. Case could be made he still should. 

It’s maybe the largest thing in his regret column, and at this point… it’d only be pushing his regrets onto someone else, and that’s not something you do to someone you love. So it’ll stay right where it is. Sin of omission, and he’ll live with it until he can’t.

Still, he catches Bobby’s eye across the table as Johnny talks about Kreese, and they share a little bit of a moment. Nothing earthshaking; nothing that changes anything, just, each of them knows that the first person you always have to forgive is yourself, and Tommy hopes what they’re communicating is that Bobby is going to keep trying to help Johnny see that because that _is_ what you do for someone you love, and even if Johnny still doesn’t know in his heart that they love him even when he’s a fuckup, Tommy knows. Also, Bobby loves everyone; it’s why Tommy has that big motherfucker of a regret.

Of course, fifteen minutes later they’re getting tossed out of a bar like they’re twenty-year-old idiots all over again, and it’s glorious, but also sad. Every ‘last’ is sad. 

Tommy’s a realist, after all; this is his last pub crawl. Bar slither. Whatever.

He hops back on the bike before any of the others start asking if any of that was too much for him. It was; he’s having a lot of what his neighbor’s kids call _chest feels_ , and he wants a few minutes of wind in his face before they get to the campfire heart to heart up the hill.

Getting back off the bike is harder than Tommy wants it to be – everything hurts most of the time now, and it’s okay, he has a bucket of drugs he can take for it, but first he has to get into his saddlebags and get a drink, so that’s gonna take a minute. Or maybe it isn’t so bad; he’s grateful for Jimmy next to him, Jimmy who has a couple of teenagers now and knows how to walk the line between help and pride, who man-hugs him off the bike and makes it about camaraderie rather than frailty. Jimmy’s a good man.

He gets into the pockets, drops three pills into his hands, and swallows them down, then stand-leans, butt propped on the seat but not fully seated, until one starts to clear his head a little and another starts to fog it.

Delicate balance.

He eventually makes his way over and sits down next to Bobby on one of the artfully arranged logs that serve as roughing-it seats. “Thanks for dragging everyone out,” he says.

“What makes you think it was me planned it?” Bobby asks. He looks at Tommy and there is exactly nothing in his expression that denies it. Tommy makes a _don’t bullshit a bullshitter_ face, and Bobby grins and looks ten years younger for it.

“You always were the one who wanted to look out for us,” Tommy says. “‘Spect it’s why you turned to preachering.”

“You were the only one that didn’t bust up laughing when I told you I was thinking about it,” Bobby says. “Remember, out in the canyon?”

Tommy _does_ remember, although he’s never known whether Bobby did. Or, if he did, whether he remembered the evening as a couple of buds in their mid-twenties drunkenly shooting the shit and razzing each other and then maybe giving each other a helping hand because who has time to manage a relationship, or, as Tommy does, as the night he realized he was never going to be the marrying kind unless some kind of miracle changed the rules and let him have _this_. Tommy remembers that night as profound, maybe sacred, maybe terrifying. Mostly terrifying.

Not that he did anything about it, then or when in fact, the miracle came along.

And he’s not going to now. Bobby’s never mentioned it, ever, and Tommy never wanted to rock that boat.

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I remember that night.”

“Me, too,” Bobby says, and his voice cracks a little, and Tommy is _not_ going down that path because this is a party.

“I should hope so; it was a monumental moment of career watershed. Also, I think my sage advice was I told you better you than Jimmy.”

Bobby wets his lips, but after a just-too-long pause, allows the change of subject. “Or Dutch. Can you imagine?”

Tommy shrugs. “You never know. Prison changes a man, sometimes.”

“Prison, theology school…”

“Cancer.”

“Nah, you’re who you always were, mostly. You changed any of the bad stuff a long time ago. I don’t think Dutch has ever wanted to change, not any of the things he’d need to grow out of. Five to ten, ten to twenty, wouldn’t’a mattered if it was fifty.”

“There is that. Johnny does, though. Want to change.”

“Maybe.” Bobby looks across the fire to where Johnny and Jimmy are arguing genially about something which given Jimmy is in the conversation is probably about some kind of finance thing. “Kreese, though. Goddamn.”

“I thought you couldn’t say that shit in vain.”

“Oh no, man, that was a fucking prayer for our friend to, I don’t know, wisdom? Something? Find some sense and make a move on it? Kreese is, well, you know, and how can that be, it shouldn’t happen.”

“…Did you start drinking before the rest of us?”

“No.” Bobby chuckles, then sobers quickly, his grin remaining but his eyes gone still and steady. “No, but if not now, when?” He stops for a second, then gives another little huff of a laugh. “Everything’s pretty close to the surface right now, you know?”

Tommy nodded. “Cancer is a real bitch and I guess the kicker is, it took dying for us to have a legitimate conversation about the similarities between divinity school and incarceration.” He winks. “Well, _almost_ dying; I seem to still be breathing. But you gotta work on him more later. He’s gonna need it, you know?”

Bobby takes a swig of his drink and then another, and watches the fire for a long time after he nods.

When Jimmy comes around, Tommy goes to take a crack at bequeathing wisdom upon Johnny. Jimmy, he doesn’t need to worry about, but Johnny. Well. It’s another last, but that’s neither here nor there to what he wants to say.

~~~

_Johnny Lawrence_  
_Cobra Kai karate dojo_  
_Receda CA 91335_  
_(2163 Receda Ave # 5)_

Johnny looks at the envelope for a good minute, because for one thing, who sends things in envelopes except him; everyone seems to do “e” mail or the cell phone app things, but also because ‘CA 91335’ and the out of order last line is added in a different hand and ink color.

Well, so opening it is probably going to lead to learning there’s a new, like, law about door width in strip malls his dojo is violating, but not knowing is probably going to end up worse for him in the long run, right?

That’s usually what happens. Fuck. Fine.

He tears open the top and takes out a piece of notebook paper that’s folded in thirds, and a post-it.

The post-it says, _This was in Tommy’s saddlebag when they went through his things. – Bobby. PS I didn’t read it, just finished the address. Call me if you want to talk._

That seems cheerful.

Johnny briefly considers, he could pretend to have never received it. He could just drop it in a public trash can somewhere, and leave the campfire to be the last memory. Bobby would ask and Johnny would shrug and it would be a mystery.

Except.

If Tommy wrote _Cobra Kai karate dojo_ , then he wrote this after everyone went to sleep, and like, that seems disrespectful. 

Being an adult is terrible.

Shit. Also, the students will be here in half an hour and if he’s going to be a girl about whatever this says, he wants to get it over before then.

He unfolds the letter.

_Johnny,_

_I just wanted to say one more thing, and then I’ll let it go. Not that I’ll have a choice; I don’t imagine we’ll see each other again unless the docs are all wet. Here it is. Kreese used to say, the fight isn’t over until the opponent is finished. That’s me and this damn cancer, you know? I’m the opponent. The fight’s about to be over, cancer winning, and it’s because cancer is a great big fucking bully._

_I think you stopped wanting to be the bully a long time ago, and I think Kreese made it harder for you to do that. He can have second, third, fifteenth chances, but Johnny, does he have to have them with you? And worse, with the kids you obviously love? Shut up, that doesn’t make you a wuss. You’re allowed to love them and I know that’s why you’re trying to figure shit out to teach them._

_Anyway. That’s it. I loved being your friend, even when we were all assholes and even when we weren’t, and I hope you loved being mine too. Regret is a bitch, and I’ll be happy not to have any more, but for me that pretty much took dying. You have a crack at living._

_Tommy_

_PS. Call Bobby. He’s great at helping with stuff, and he could teach your kids about mercy, right? Which is, all arguments to the contrary, a real thing men can have._

Johnny blows out a breath and ignores the tickle in the backs of his eyes. He folds the paper back up and puts it in the envelope, then the envelope in the desk, and closes the drawer quietly.

He thinks about popping a beer, ignoring the kids who will show up soon, letting Cobra Kai die because obviously, clearly, at least some of it can. But that’s not who he’s trying to be, and yeah, he’s really bad at looking on any kind of bright side or expecting, well, anything – it’s ironic, since the whole skillset of fighting is about seeing the punch coming, and yet he’s never learned how to do it in literally any other context – but no. He’ll open up and push through, right? Never over until the opponent is finished isn’t necessarily a bad way to keep on going, right? 

He can’t really say who the opponent is now, if it’s LaRusso or the landlord or that bitch who fired him for doing what she asked. He doesn’t know how he’s going to fuck things up next, but he’s not done fighting yet. He’s not. He picks up his pencil and roots around for his calendar thing, which apparently also most people do with one of the app things but he’s about as good with his phone as the average toddler, so he hasn’t made the leap.

Just as he lays hands on it, the bell on the door goes off and he looks up. Kreese. Well, that answers the question of whether they’ll be open today; Kreese is not a person who is flexible about anything, and also not a person who needs to know anything about what the guys had to say. He sets down the pencil real quick and just promises himself he’ll remember to call Bobby next week.

He goes to change his clothes; the kids will be here soon.

**Author's Note:**

> We don't have a lot of canon regarding these characters besides Johnny, so I gave Tommy and Bobby the potential of a relationship that at least one of them regrets not pursuing. In the episode this lives in, we maybe see a wedding ring on one of them (and not one on the other), but it's blink-n-missit quick and also this in no way precludes this past. Roll with it.


End file.
